ALL POSSIBLE graphs, tables with numbers and percentages - similar results of sociological research can be found today at important scientific conferences, and in glossy magazines, and on the World Wide Web. Who spends more on groceries, who will win the elections, and who will break the birth rate record? Who is interested in these questions, who is looking for answers to them, and who is being interviewed for this? Personally, sociologists have never addressed me, so I, as I think, and many readers, asked these questions.
I came to David ROTMAN, Director of the Center for Sociological and Political Research of the Belarusian State University for answers.
- David Genrikhovich, why do we need sociological research, what is their practical use for ordinary people?
Let me explain with specific examples. If a study is conducted, for example, on health and healthy lifestyles, it reveals how the health care system in the country works, its advantages and disadvantages. It allows you to determine this and how people themselves understand what a healthy lifestyle is, how they behave when faced with an illness, whether they go to a doctor. Therefore, all this is needed primarily in order to make our life more comfortable. I want people to understand how important this is, and therefore answer honestly. This is a kind of civic responsibility, because we are all part of society, and a lot depends on us. Based on the results of such surveys, government bodies and public organizations can make certain decisions to improve our lives. And how can this be done if there is no information about what is happening in society and what worries it? Sociological research is precisely what makes it possible to obtain such information. You can write as many complaints about the clinic as you like. But if such information is collected from a thousand people and transferred to a high state body, the chances of resolving the issue are much greater. Many other problems are also being studied. The research results of sociologists are very important both for people and for sociological science itself.
- How are respondents selected for conducting sociological surveys?
Previously, the so-called quota selection was more commonly used. Now the so-called random sampling is more popular among sociologists. At the first stage of selection, the regions and settlements for the survey are randomly identified. This is done in different ways. For example, by lot. Then they also choose the street in the city, house and apartment number. In apartments, not every person is interviewed, but only the one whose birthday is closest to the moment our interviewer arrives. There are also principles developed by mathematicians. According to them, the respondents should be at least a thousand. Only in this case the laws of probability work. The main rule of selection: each person should have an equal opportunity to get into the sample. Therefore, our interviewers must strictly follow the selection rules and follow the established route. For example, if he was not allowed to enter the 47th apartment in a certain house on a certain street, or there was no one at home, he cannot enter the neighboring apartment, but must move on along the route to the next randomly selected address. Moreover, if somewhere someone was not at home, he must return at least 4 more times to this apartment until he finds the owner of the house. After processing the questionnaires, the percentage of respondents is divided by the so-called demographic groups (men, women, youth, pensioners, with or without higher education, etc.), which are compared with the data of the last population census - with a high-quality and correct survey, they should be approximately the same, an error of +, - 5 percent is allowed (for example, if, according to the census, there are about 47 percent of men in our country, then they should make up about the same number of the total number of respondents. - Approx. Ya.M.). Then comes the quality control of information collection. To do this, we have a special group that checks from 10 to 20 percent of the respondents using the “re-visit” method. They call and ask if the interviewer really came, what he asked about and how long the conversation lasted. If violations are identified, the interviews are repeated. The next step is checking the logic of the responses. There should be no contradictions here. For example, does the respondent's age correlate with how many years ago he got married and the age of his children. In a word, it is a very long and hard work, because our task is to obtain the most accurate information. We carry out research mainly on the orders of interested organizations. Therefore, the data must be as accurate as possible. After all, they become the basis for making management decisions.
- How reliable is the collected information, because people can embellish something somewhere?
Of course, the truthfulness of the answers to the consciences of the people themselves. But sociologists have their own approaches. For example, in the questionnaires, in addition to direct questions, there are "trap questions" and "test questions". They immediately show who is lying: if a person in one place answered like this, and in another to a worded differently, but, in fact, the same question gave a different answer, the questionnaire is rejected.
A person can find many reasons to refuse a survey - I think there are enough of them. What do you do in this case?
Initially, we try to find suitable interviewers who can find an approach to the person and explain the importance of their work. If someone is busy at this moment, then we politely ask when it is possible to enter. If, nevertheless, we get a refusal, then we simply move on to the address specified by the route. In general, there are refusals for various reasons. For example, in some cities sectarians are starting to walk on the heels of our specialists, introduce themselves as sociologists and offer their leaflets. Naturally, people do not want to let them in. Therefore, before starting the research in the press, we inform people about this. Plus, our employees always have a certificate with them. But the opposite also happens, when our specialist visits an elderly grandmother, and she is bored, and she begins to talk about everything in the world and does not let him go for hours.
David Genrikhovich, in your experience, how open are Belarusians for communication and how willingly they go to such interviews?
Most people make contact. In addition, various test questions show that, as a rule, they are telling the truth. Our people are open. Most often they greet our employees with a smile on their face. Therefore, the interviewers have no complaints about people, they like the job, and they are waiting for new assignments.
- Where do you get research topics from?
Sociological research is carried out in two cases: if there is an obvious problem situation, or if an organization has ordered the study of a particular issue. When we get the result and see very important information, we provide it to those who, in our opinion, may be interested in it. Sociologists have the same principle as doctors: the main thing is not to harm. Therefore, if we notice a problem, we try to help solve it.
- Who usually orders such studies?
Anyone - various international organizations, government agencies, commercial firms, public organizations. For example, now we are conducting a study at the border - we are looking at how much time it takes for passport control when traveling to Poland and Lithuania. This is an order from the International Finance Corporation (IFC). In parallel, large-scale research is being carried out jointly with the University of Cambridge "Mortality and Privatization". British scientists have suggested that the higher the privatization in the country, the higher the death rate. For the study, we decided to take Russia and Belarus - we really have both the level of privatization and the death rate lower than in Russia. We do a lot of different research. Among them are international projects. We have represented and represent Belarus in studies of European and world values, in the study of electoral systems, in INTAS projects and in the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission. We work on orders from the leading ministries and departments of our country, large firms and industrial organizations.
- David Genrikhovich, do you yourself trust the research of other sociological centers?
If everything is done according to the rules, then there should be no mistakes, and you can trust. But more recently, parliamentary elections were held in Great Britain and presidential elections in Poland. It turned out that election polls in both countries gave erroneous results. In Britain, they showed that Cameron's party would not win, and they did. In Poland, they talked about Komorowski's victory in the first round, but he lost. Recently it became known that a similar mistake occurred in Spain at the municipal elections. We are now looking closely at why the research has produced erroneous results. To do this, we turned to colleagues in different countries. The reasons for mistakes are important to us. After all, it is not without reason that it is said that one should learn from the mistakes of others. This allows you to avoid your own.
- David Genrikhovich, thanks for the interesting conversation!
Sociology is the science of society, the systems that make it up, the laws of functioning and development, social institutions, relationships and communities. The term "sociology" was first introduced into scientific circulation by O. Comte in 1832 in the 47th lecture of the "Course of Positive Philosophy".
As a generation changed and our lives changed, people slowly began to understand that life would become much more difficult without sociologists. because sociology is a science that studies people both from the inside and outside, studies the social life of a person, and also studies the relationship of people with each other.
In my opinion, or rather in my own words, I understand sociology as a connection between a person and society as a whole. Sociology, along with other related sciences, studies how society is established, what functions society performs and how it changes. Sociologists are in direct contact with people, due to which they get to know people better. Sociologists are scientists who should be especially wise, because they not only learn a lot, but also must be able to find the most important thing in this.
I chose my future profession at about the beginning of the first grade, because I began to understand and realize that sociology is one of the most interesting and demanded professions. We can say that the work is very diverse and requires knowledge of statistics and social theory, psychology, law, economics, history and many other subjects. In addition, a sociologist must have the skills of analytical and critical thinking, perfect use of a computer. roles. Sociologists see something special and new, in the simplest situations, they follow everything that happens in the world around them and try to find something very interesting and new for themselves. Sociologists follow television broadcasts, listen to the radio, read many books and magazines, that is, they try to learn about social life and various facts as quickly as possible.
Sociologists perform a number of functions that each of them knows. The most important task facing sociologists is the ability to develop new processes in the future, creating an opportunity for better development of society. Sociological research is now used to make any government decisions, laws. Sociologists are also needed in advertising, it is with their work that any advertising campaign begins, if it is planned to invest really significant funds in it. And finally, in the media, sociologists conduct polls, conduct thematic columns, combine data for information tables, and compile ratings.
At first glance, the work of a sociologist looks a little boring and not interesting, but this is not at all so, in fact it is a very painstaking work, because a sociologist first identifies a problem, then decides in what ways or ways it is best to solve it. Then they just get down to work.
Completed by: Avetisyan Lilit. Sat-122
Checked by: Laktyukhina E.G.
Before trying to answer the question posed in the title of the article, it should be noted that in every city where there is a university, you can find a sociological faculty where students study, despite this, there is no understanding in society of sociology or the area of activity in which sociologists are involved ... This becomes obvious on the one hand when studying the labor market: it is rarely possible to find professions on it that would make a requirement for basic sociological education; on the other hand, after communicating with those who are not associated with sociology: for the majority, sociology seems to be a dubious science, and a sociologist finds a place at best as social workers, or interviewers during a population census, especially advanced ones find a place for sociologists as marketers; Finally, it is not uncommon and those who graduate from sociological faculties cannot even articulate two words about their discipline and their field of application. For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that a similar situation for graduates of most faculties ( especially humanitarian), due to the underdevelopment of the higher education system and, as a consequence, the low level of graduated specialists, there is also the problem of the labor market, which often forces a graduate of a higher educational institution to look for a job that is not related to the specialty, either due to low earnings, or due to lack of employment. the labor market of jobs corresponding to the received diploma. But this article will only focus on sociologists and sociology.
First of all, it should be said that sociology is the science of society, in any case, such a banal definition of sociology is known to many, but it is quite obvious that it does not reveal either the essence of sociology or its purpose. In this regard, another definition given by the founder of sociology, O. Comte, should be cited:sociology is a sciencestudying how the mind and mind of a person are improved under the influence of social life. From the last definition, in any case, already follows the idea that was invested by the founders of sociology. You can say more about it like this: we are talking about a science that, by studying the processes occurring in society, should reveal the patterns of their development and, already proceeding from them, develop a fundamental model of how society should be arranged, from the point of view of the set parameters(which in the case of O. Comte is the improvement of the human mind and mind) and prescriptions on how this model can be implemented, based on this, it should also giveunambiguous answer to the question: Where are the existing social systems heading?
Obviously, the requirements for science should be extremely stringent, so the word “unambiguous” was emphasized in the last sentence. It will be fair to say that since sociology is a relatively young science, it still cannot give such an unambiguous answer to many questions; for this, a metrologically consistent categorical apparatus is still poorly developed in sociology, nevertheless, today sociology is already well developed. a tool (methodology and methodology) of sociological research, which allows you to determine and solve a number of issues empirically.
After the place of sociology in the life of society has been determined and it is expressed for what it is needed, you can go to where sociologists can be involved in a public association of labor. But before we move on to this, we first draw attention to the fact that the word society can be called both the whole of humanity as a whole, and individual groups of people, in this connection we will use the term social system in order to emphasize on the one hand that society can to represent it as a certain system, that is, a set of objects having a connection with each other and functioning within the framework of certain laws (in this case, we are talking about not legal laws, but general ones, by analogy with the laws of physics). Social systems differ from each other in goals and objectives (this is expressed by the type of activity) that they solve, in the number of objects available in it and in many other indicators, we will restrict ourselves to those listed as we consider them to be the main ones. Accordingly, three principal areas of the sociologist's activity can be distinguished: 1. construction of social systems - this type of activity includes the creation of new social systems, the reconstruction of existing social systems, the optimization of social systems, the dismantling of unnecessary social systems; 2. technologist - this type of activity includes maintaining social systems in working order, developing technologies to optimize the work of social systems, developing technologies for filling new social systems with objects, reconstruction technology and dismantling technologies; 3. statistician - this type of activity includes all types of collection and analysis of useful data about social systems, which are later used by technologists and designers.
Surely we have not listed all the types of activities that sociologists can and should be engaged in, but we have indicated the main areas of activity, especially since society really needs them. The lack of understanding by society of the field of application of sociology and sociologists creates a problem, which is sometimes expressed in nothing unjustified decisions in the framework of the creation, development and deconstruction of social systems, which leads to various consequences, ranging from the elementary failure of the social system to fulfill the functions assigned to it and ending with human sacrifices in the power of erroneously constructed and incorrectly functioning already existing social systems.
Today is the age of information technology development. And you won’t surprise anyone with the concept of a computer and the Internet, but do not forget that we all first of all live in a society and are simply not able to exist separately from it. Each of us every day has to communicate with a certain number of people in transport, at work, in a store.
But at the same time, among the discussed and most popular topics, for the most part we are interested in the political or economic situation in the world and in the country.
There is a science that studies the relationship in society, between people coexisting in it. So let's clarify what exactly she is studying, what issues are fundamental and of the highest priority. Sociology is a science that studies many of the most common social phenomena, various aspects of the life and activities of each individual. So why do we need this kind of science? It is very important for every person, as it provides answers to a huge variety of questions that relate to the ethnic, social, demographic situation in society; helps to solve problems that arise in different organizations and groups; it examines the characteristics of the family, personality, politics, religion, education, economics and others.
Sociology is a science that studies social processes and phenomena both at the level of society as a whole, and in relations at the level of the individual, which, in turn, can be divided into the following components:
- general theoretical sociology as a macrosociological analysis aimed at identifying general rules, development and functioning of society as a whole;
- middle-level theories are focused on analyzing the sequence of patterns of action, as well as the interaction of various parts of the social system, namely sociology of the city, ethnosociology, sociology of the village, social groups, economic sociology, political sociology, education, propaganda, law, culture, family.
- applied sociology is a part of general sociological knowledge and explores social reality using certain specific methods, instrumental technologies, studying the behavior of a mass of people in different areas of social life.
The political and economic types of this science are formed on the verge of other equally important teachings and developments. Political sociology can act as a separate science, but it is still a branch of the main science that studies mechanisms, factors and forms. The political branch of this science acts as a part of the theory of the middle level. The political field studies the factors of social action of people, as well as social relations in the field of politics. This science investigates the political behavior of small and large social groups, political orientation and values, the role of public opinion in politics, the social base of political parties, political regimes, and so on. What does political sociology study? Why is political sociology needed? First of all, then, that she studies politics as a complex of political institutions, relations and consciousness.
Economic subtype
The economic branch of this science is one of the subsystems of general sociology, but it can also act as a separate science. Economic sociology studies the relationship between the social and economic areas of society and their relationship with other areas. What are the main tasks that the economic field of this science solves? This is, first of all, the determination of the level of satisfaction by the economy of the social needs of people; determination of the level of influence of economic factors on the functioning of social institutions and socio-economic behavior of individuals; the degree of influence of social qualities of people on the formation of the economic sphere of society and labor behavior. Why is economic sociology needed? Economic sociology as a science conducts the study of the social mechanisms of economic development and the ways of the fullest satisfaction of the various needs of people.
The economic branch of this science also belongs to the theory of the middle level.
The sociology of culture is the science that examines the functioning and structure of culture in relation to social institutions and structures that can be applied to specific historical situations, as well as the relationship between culture and society as a whole. This science belongs to the theory of the middle level. The subject of the sociology of culture is the regularity of the dynamics of culture, the dissimilarity of models of sociocultural life and the study of the consequences and results of the activities of representatives of different social groups and individuals, which is aimed at transforming or maintaining public life in relation to the level. Sociology of culture studies the direction of cultural development in society. The field of sociology is also the sociology of labor, which studies both the social process of labor activity, the influence of social and technological conditions on attitudes towards work, and social factors that affect the increase in labor efficiency. It can also be classified as a middle-level theory.
Labor relations in society
Sociology of labor studies and analyzes behavior and ongoing changes in the field of modern production, as well as in the employment and labor market. The mainstream of research in the sociology of labor is an analysis of the influence of forms of social organization and working conditions on the growth of labor productivity and attitudes towards it. These are the aspects of labor that sociology studies as a science:
- the employee's attitude to his work, satisfaction and personal motivation;
- positioning of an employee in society, hidden opportunities and level of interest;
- attitude in teams at various levels, efficiency and quality of performance, assignment of authority, quality, and so on. The specificity of the study of education in sociology is the tracking of social necessity in education, the attitude of society towards it;
- personal and social needs in the education sector;
- the impact of education on the social status of the individual and the stages of development of society;
- assessment of knowledge, quality and effectiveness of education. As a separate sociological science, the sociology of education considers education as a social institution in its connection with society and its appearance, development, its relationship with other social institutions, social inequality and equality in the field of education, as well as the importance of education in the socialization of the individual.
The sociology of education is also part of the theory of the middle level. Sociology of personality can also act as a separate science. Sociology of personality studies the individual, his social formation, development, formation in the ecosocial, biosocial and social environment. It can be safely attributed to the theory of the middle level. To study personality, it is typologized or defined to one of the social types. A social personality type is an extensive reflection, a complex of social qualities that are repeated and inherent in many individuals who are part of one of the social communities. So, sociology is an indicator of the state of society's life.
Why study sociology
This science allows us to comprehend the impact of the changes that are dictated by the present, on individuals and society as a whole, different aspects of people's lives. Economic and political sociology helps to see a complete picture of the state of the country from the side of mass character. The political and economic situation can be changed by the public, it will ambiguously require appropriate adjustments for further successful development.
In order to feel confident in society, knowledge of the basics of the science considered in today's article will not hurt a single person. One of its undoubted advantages is that it not only explains the ongoing processes, but also has a certain influence on them. Knowing the basics of sociological concepts, you can independently analyze what is happening around us, plan the further development of historically important events, take the necessary steps in time to resolve existing and potential problems.
Video what sociology studies
Sociology (fr. Sociologie, lat. Societas - society and Greek - Logos - the science of society) - the science of society, individual social institutions (state, law, morality, etc.), processes and social social communities of people.
Modern sociology is a multitude of currents and scientific schools that explain its subject and role in different ways, and answer the question of what sociology is in different ways. There are various definitions of sociology as a science of society. "A Brief Dictionary of Sociology" defines sociology as the science of the laws of formation, functioning, development of society, social relations and social communities. The Sociological Dictionary defines sociology as the science of the laws of development and functioning of social communities and social processes, of social relations as a mechanism of interconnection and interaction between society and people, between communities, between communities and the individual. The book "Introduction to Sociology" notes that sociology is a science that focuses on social communities, their genesis, interaction and development trend. Each of the definitions has a rationale. Most scientists tend to believe that the subject of sociology is society or certain social phenomena.
Consequently, sociology is the science of generic properties and basic laws of social phenomena.
Sociology not only chooses empirical experience, that is, sensory perception as the only means of reliable knowledge, social changes, but also theoretically generalizes it. With the advent of sociology, new opportunities have opened up to penetrate into the inner world of the individual, to understand her life goals, interests, and needs. However, sociology studies not a person in general, but his concrete world - the social environment, the communities in which he is included, the way of life, social connections, social actions. Without diminishing the importance of numerous branches of social science, sociology is nevertheless unique in its ability to see the world as an integral system. Moreover, the system is considered by sociology not only as functioning and developing, but also as experiencing a state of deep crisis. Modern sociology is trying to study the causes of the crisis and find ways out of the crisis in society. The main problems of modern sociology are the survival of mankind and the renewal of civilization, raising it to a higher stage of development. Sociology seeks solutions to problems not only at the global level, but also at the level of social communities, specific social institutions and associations, and the social behavior of an individual. Sociology is a multilevel science representing the unity of abstract and concrete forms, macro- and microtheoretical approaches, theoretical and empirical knowledge.
